


Shieldmaiden to the Modern-day Queen

by lurknomoar



Series: Bits and Pieces and Older Writings [20]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bodyguard Romance, CEO Pepper Potts, F/F, Open Relationships, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26992663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurknomoar/pseuds/lurknomoar
Summary: Sif needs a purpose. Pepper needs a bodyguard. The rest is history. (Written for an unlikely pairings challenge back in 2014.)
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Sif, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (background poly), Tony Stark/Bruce Banner (background poly)
Series: Bits and Pieces and Older Writings [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1467382
Kudos: 2





	Shieldmaiden to the Modern-day Queen

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this silly little snippet back in 2014-ish, so most of the MCU timeline has not yet happened yet.
> 
> Let's say... this takes place somewhere after IM3 (so Tony kinda stopped being Iron Man) and after CA:TWS (so Hydra is back), but before Ultron and Civil War, where a lot of plotlines and characters started going in a very different direction.

A month after SHIELD falls and HYDRA is back in full force, Pepper Potts get kidnapped. Coulson’s team successfully purged all records on Project Centipede, but HYDRA’s research division is still desperate to reverse-engineer the Extremis formula. So they take the one known survivor in hopes of finding traces of it in her blood. Luckily Pepper is very smart, very paranoid, and very adept at typing blind with her hands behind her back. She manages to signal her whereabouts to Tony within ten minutes, Tony calls for reinforcements and Pepper is promptly rescued. But this isn’t a happy ending: both of them know that HYDRA will try again, that Pepper isn’t safe anymore.

They have a huge argument that night. It is clear that Pepper needs protection. It is clear that if Tony rebuilds the armour and tries to protect her personally, they will both go back to a place they don’t want to be, Tony to his jittery obsessive insomnia and Pepper to her quiet miserable worry. Tony thinks the solution is for Pepper to hide out somewhere safe until it all blows over, and Pepper thinks going on the run is a terrible idea. He thinks Stark Industries will work fine without her spending twelve hours a day running it as CEO, she thinks he wouldn’t say that if he had the slightest idea about what’s going on in his own company. Next morning they reconcile with pancakes, sex, and the compromise that Pepper needs to get a bodyguard.

The problem is that neither of them trust anyone to do it. After all that went down with Project Insight, SHIELD is out of the question. Stark Industries has been largely demilitarised, and has no personnel who could handle Pepper’s personal protection. Private contractors could always be HYDRA infiltrators. Rhodey laughs in Tony’s face when asked, then gently reminds him that he already has a job. The problem is only solved when Thor crashes into their mansion a few days later, to complain about the inferiority of Midgardian computer interfaces. When Pepper mentions her safety problem, he suggests ‘the Lady Sif, a great and loyal warrior!’, and he promises to ask her if she’ll take the job. All he requires in payment is that Tony start working on a computer that processes Allspeak.

And that is how Pepper ends up with a bodyguard who is deadly, taciturn, and distractingly hot. When she was introduced to Pepper, she dropped to her knees and offered her sword – Pepper was later informed that this is standard practice for Asgardians. She also realises that if a probably-immortal master-warrior is going to follow her to board meetings and business lunches, she is going to need some clothes that look more professional and less ren faire. Unfortunately, wearing a fitted suit with her hair pulled back in a bun, Sif looks even more distractingly hot. But then again, Pepper has had a lot of practice balancing multiple distractions.

What gets on her nerves is that Sif keeps addressing her as _Lady of Stark_. After the tenth time it happens, she tries to explain that she and Tony are not married, and that saying that she is anything of his doesn’t exactly suit her. But Sif just blinks, uncomprehending, and then her face lights up. ‘I do not call you Stark after your beloved, but after your dominion. Or do you not rule Stark Industries?’ Pepper concedes that she does, and does not corrects Sif the next time she calls her Lady of Stark. She smiles instead.

As for Sif, she is well and truly impressed. She has heard that this Midgardian woman had the power of the all-consuming fire in her grasp, that she became her own pyre and burned to vanquish her enemies and save her beloved, and that she relinquished her deadly fire. At first Sif thought her a coward for throwing away a chance to be a warrior of unprecedented renown, the fire that scourges the world. Someone willing to do that, even to save their own lives, seems to her a paltry warrior. But having watched Pepper for a few weeks, she knows Pepper is no warrior at all, she is the one warriors serve. She is a queen. Sif watches Pepper strategize and negotiate and order and veto and rule, and she is surprised to find that she wants to serve her too. And she knows that for her, loyalty cannot be parted from love. It wasn’t, when she served Thor.

Weeks pass, and the two of them spend most of their time together – because Pepper works long hours and Sif’s work is being by her side. And Sif sees her both as a commanding queen and as a human woman, someone who eats a meal of three cranberry cereal bars for lunch while walking from one meeting to another, who drinks her coffee bitterly strong and has practical ten-minute cat naps curled up in her office chair, her chin resting on her knees, her hair falling into her face, her high heels off, set tidily beside the desk. And Pepper sees Sif as a great warrior and probably the best security expert in multiple worlds, but also as a woman who finds most earth customs and appliances annoying, and at one point challenges Siri to a duel despite knowing that she is just a piece of software and does not possess a physical body. (No lasting harm done: apparently it is a matter of honour, and since Pepper is the CEO now, she can easily afford to compensate the unfortunate employee whose phone Sif ran through with an actual sword.) And above all, they find in one another a confidante, someone they can rant to about the mournful incompetence of everybody else, someone they can sit silently by, safe and comfortable.

So Sif does all she can to keep her lady safe, to guard her from evil. It is HYDRA she is expecting, so a hit ordered by a rival engineering company somehow manages to elude her, and the assassin disguised as a deliveryman is already in Pepper’s office before Sif manages to subdue him. She bows low and apologises to Pepper, and only then does she realise that her arm is bleeding where some broken glass grazed it.

‘Wait, I’m used to this,’ says Pepper in a tired, long-suffering voice, and takes a first aid kit from her desk. She makes Sif sit down and kneels by her side to clean and bandage the wound. And Sif sees that despite her youth as a fledgling Midgardian, she must be as ancient in her wisdom as the soothsaying healing miracle-making queens of old. And then Pepper looks up at her, her distant wisdom resolves into the curiosity of playful young Midgard, and she kisses Sif on the lips.

Sif kisses back, and Pepper, well, she is very surprised, and very pleased. It is only after another kiss, falling on the floor and a few minutes making out as enthusiastically as possible without hurting Sif’s arm, that she remembers that there is a dead guy in the room.

So Pepper calls for the body to be removed (it says something about working conditions at Stark Industries that they keep a separate janitor specialised for dead bodies), marches Sif out of her office, into the elevator and up to her bedroom in the penthouse suite. She wonders if she is being bossy, but Sif seems all right with it. 

‘I need to know if I risk your beloved’s wrath,’ blurts Sif at what Pepper considers the worst possible moment, with many of her clothes already thrown across the room.

‘No, no you don’t, keep going,’ she whines. But Sif doesn’t look sure, so she continues. ‘I may sleep with anyone and so can he, as long as we tell each other. He had grudging-thank-you-sex with Christine Everhart, and he kisses the Hulk a lot. Is that enough?’

‘So you are free to give your love if you do not cease loving him,' says Sif, carefully. 

‘Yes, that is right, now can we get this started already?’

‘Yes, milady,' says Sif, and in the next few hours Pepper comes to the realization that Sif isn’t merely all right with bossiness, she actually likes it. A lot.


End file.
